“What do you call a hint?” I asked.
“Oh, well, old Fleury sent me word if I did not find some respectable employment he would have me cool my heels a while in the prison of the Châtelet—not the Bastille, mind you, where Voltaire and all the wits and dandies are sent—but to the Châtelet, the prison of the common malefactors. The cardinal’s message is what I call a delicate hint. However, I may make my fortune yet. The Duc de Lauzun was a mere provincial like me, and was often in straits—yet he married the king’s niece, and made her pull his boots off for him.”
I looked at the fellow in admiration. His evil life had not dimmed his eye or his smile, his courage or his impudence.
The crowd was still increasing, and there must have been a hundred persons present by that time. Lafarge, the bad actor from the Comédie Française was hanging about, and I was the more convinced he was bent on mischief. Jacques Haret had gone off—the performance was about beginning. A white cloth, fastened to two poles was let down upon the stage, just as they do with those songs which the actors at the theaters are forbidden to sing; the orchestra plays the air, and the audience sings the verses which are painted upon these white cloths. In this case, though, the inscription in huge red letters was this:
“The part of Mariamne, in Madame Mariamne and Monsieur Herod, will be played by
Mademoiselle Adrienne,
the most wonderful child actress in the world, who will one day continue the glory of the name of Adrienne!”
The people shouted with delight at this. Mademoiselle Adrienne Lecouvreur was then the idol of the Parisians, and she was moving all Paris to tears in Monsieur Arouet’s—or Voltaire’s, for I continually forget—tragedy of Mariamne. The present performance, I then knew, was to be a burlesque on the play of the notary’s son.